


16 Hours

by d0nquix0te



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-03 02:24:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1064630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/d0nquix0te/pseuds/d0nquix0te
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Isaac, Lydia, and Deaton wait for Scott, Allison, and Stiles to wake up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	16 Hours

Isaac has been sitting on the counter in Deaton’s examination room for the last half hour, frowning at the floor and listening to the seconds tick by on the clock. Three of his friends float underwater in front of him, dead. 

“How long is it supposed to take?” he asks. Both Lydia and Deaton look over at him. Deaton has been arranging some files and Lydia has been reading a textbook. How she’s able to focus on something like AP History at a time like this, Isaac doesn’t understand. 

Deaton looks at the tubs of freezing water in the centre of the room. “Minutes to hours, Isaac. It depends on what they see, not how the sacrifice is performed.”

There are questions they should have asked the veterinarian beforehand, not now when Scott, Allison, and Stiles are already drowned and going through the sacrifice. Isaac suspects the three of them hadn’t wanted to know more than necessary, though, and he doesn’t blame them. Not too long ago, Isaac had been in one of the same tubs and hadn’t wanted to ask too many questions until the last moment, when they were about to force him below the iced water. 

“We could be here awhile,” he states, eyes still on the floor. 

“Yes, we will likely be here awhile.”

Lydia goes back to her book and Isaac sees her crossing her legs in the corner of his eye. He looks up, across the room to where she sits, and sees that her eyes aren’t actually moving, only staring at the pages. He realizes he hasn’t heard the sound of a page turning in over five minutes. 

Isaac spends the next half hour listening to see if Lydia ever actually finishes a page, or maybe just turns one to keep up appearances. He counts six turns before he starts to feel like he’s going crazy with the anticipation and decides he needs a new focus. 

Deaton is the calmest of all of them. Isaac looks over to him. “Do you need any help with those files?” he asks. 

“I’ll be done soon,” Deaton says, much to Isaac’s dismay. He watches as Deaton picks up a pile and fits it into place in the file cabinet. “Thank you for asking, but I can take care of it.”

An hour has already gone by and Isaac can’t imagine they have much longer to wait. He takes a deep breath and leans back against the wooden cupboards behind him, eyes closing. It’s uncomfortable, but he’s glad for it. The past couple days have felt like a marathon and he’s certain his body would give into sleep given the opportunity, no matter how much he wants to stay awake for when Scott, Allison, and Stiles come back to life. The way his neck bends awkwardly against the cupboards and his back aches from the hard surface ensure that he won’t drift off to sleep to recharge his energy. 

There’s a buzzing sound across the room and Isaac looks up to watch Lydia fish her phone out of her bag. Her brows furrow as she opens up a text message. “It’s from Peter,” she says quietly. 

“Peter has your number?”

She shakes her head. “It’s from Derek’s phone. According to his uncle, he did something to heal Cora and now they’re both sleeping it off. But they’re fine.”

Deaton perks up as he’s closing a file cabinet drawer. “How did Derek heal Cora?”

“Doesn’t say,” Lydia tells him. She begins to type a reply, but she looks uncomfortable about it. 

Deaton looks intrigued and contemplative and Isaac isn’t sure he really wants to know, but they still have time to kill and he needs the distraction. “What do you think he did?” he asks. 

“It’s possible he used his alpha spark,” Deaton answers. “As an alpha, he would be able to take Cora’s pain in a different way than you or Scott would take pain from a sick dog.”

“He cured her by taking the pain away?”

Lydia sets her book to the side, giving up the pretense of being preoccupied and focused. She looks genuinely interested in the conversation and as she listens to Deaton speak, her grip relaxes on her phone. 

Deaton nods. “The alpha spark can accomplish great things for a pack member. Such an act could just as easily kill him, however.”

Yelling at Derek to do something for Cora is still fresh in Isaac’s mind. He’s still angry, but he’d been scared for Cora and channeling his grief for Erica and Boyd into her. The thought of losing her too, even though they only just met, is painful. Hearing that Derek could have killed himself fixing it only makes Isaac feel worse about it so he tries to think about them both being safe, both in recovery, and pushes away the anger. 

Lydia never gets a reply to whatever she sent, not from Peter and not from Derek. Isaac imagines Derek, his heartbeat stopped and face wavering under shivering water just like the others in front of him. He wants all of them to just wake up already. 

After another hour, he has to get off the counter. His muscles are stiff and restless at the same time, protesting the stillness but so tired from running around the hospital and going from one place to another in mad preparation for the lunar eclipse. They’ve been all over town, taking care of one thing after another, and now, a grinding halt. 

Isaac paces. He walks back and forth along the back of the room, starting behind Allison’s tub and crossing the room to turn behind Scott’s. He moves back and forth, trying not to count out his steps, and he imagines them all waking up. 

“When you say minutes to hours,” he asks suddenly, “How many hours were you thinking?”

Deaton has taken to reading as well, some old book with a dark red leather cover that Isaac is sure has nothing to do with modern veterinary medicine. Isaac has managed to avoid asking what he’s looking up and if it has anything to do with the surrogate sacrifices. “There’s no concrete way to know,” Deaton tells him. “But I’m not surprised it’s taking a little longer. The situation is delicate.”

“Do you know of many other sacrifices like this? Is there some kind of reference list or what?” He nods at the book in Deaton’s hands with a questioning look. 

“I’m afraid not,” Deaton replies. “I’m refreshing my memory on alpha healing, actually. There’s nothing else for us to do but wait for Scott, Stiles, and Allison to come back. There have been other rituals like this before, yes, but all of them are different.”

“Is there not a set of parameters?” Lydia speaks up for the first time since the texts from Peter. 

Deaton shakes his head, smiling at her politely. “You shouldn’t think about these things in terms of science and logic, Ms. Martin. You’ll become frustrated very quickly.”

Lydia’s expression becomes critical. “Are you trying to say this is all unreliable? That’s something we could have known before beginning.”

The implication makes Isaac feel ill and he looks to both Scott and Allison’s faces in the cold water. Both of them look so calm and pale. Allison’s hair occasionally wisps through the water before settling above her shoulders again. 

“Not at all,” Deaton says. “Having a scientific explanation and being reliable are not factors that always come hand in hand. Your friends will be fine.”

“What are they seeing?” Isaac asks. 

He can feel them both looking at him but he doesn’t meet their eyes. 

Deaton answers, “The nemeton, in whatever way they will remember it. It will be meaningful to them each in some way, so that they can recall the location once they’ve returned.” It’s the same explanation he’s given to them all before but with different wording. Isaac knows his questions are probably becoming frustrating. 

He forces himself to stop pacing and instead sits down on the floor. He presses his back up against the cold metal surface of Allison’s tub and closes his eyes again. The cold against his back makes him shiver and he brings his knees up to his chest to curl into himself. After a few minutes, he hears Lydia getting up from her chair in the other corner of the room. The heels of her shoes click in the quiet of the room as she approaches and then she sits down next to him. She leans back against Stiles’ tub, leaving only a foot or two of space between them and then they sit in silence. 

For some time, Isaac battles with himself. As much as he wants to count seconds and convert them into minutes, or just look at the clock to see how much time has gone by, he doesn’t allow himself to do it. The later it gets, the more he feels like it won’t work out and they’ll never wake up. Deaton had told them all that it doesn’t work this way, that the length of time doesn’t mean it’s not working, but Isaac feels like the probability of them coming back successfully is slipping away like sand falling through his fingers. 

Light starts to come in through the small windows of the room and all of Isaac’s self-control is for nothing. Sunrise means it’s been at least five hours. Isaac had assumed hours meant only a few, maybe three at the most. How this could take as little as twenty minutes or as long as five hours, he doesn’t know. This must be what Deaton meant when he’d said thinking logically wouldn’t help. 

Lydia reaches across the small distance between them and grips his arm. “They’ll be fine,” she whispers.

Her eyes are wide and trained on the wall in front of them but she doesn’t seem to be actually looking at it. “Why do you say that?” he breathes in reply, voice feeling weak. It’s been a couple hours since he spoke out loud. 

“I just feel it,” Lydia insists. “If they were dead… for good, if they weren’t coming back. I would just know.”

Isaac doesn’t know how she’s so sure but he decides he doesn’t want to ask. Her heartbeat has been steady, she isn’t lying, and that’s good enough for him until he needs something else to distract himself with later. 

Deaton hasn’t been in the room for some time, Isaac thinks. He can’t remember how long it’s been since his heartbeat has been close. He’d explained that there were appointments already in the books, things he can’t cancel so late. They’re all only checkups and will last no more than fifteen minutes each, and he’ll be putting up the closed sign in between them. It’s weird to think of normal things happening to the rest of the world when this world, their world, has been so shaken. 

Isaac has lost track of the time again when he starts thinking about Ms. McCall, taken and on the brink of being killed. He’s been careful to not think of her like a guardian figure or to think about what might be happening to her but he thinks it might already be a lost cause. She’s been nothing but kind and generous to him, it’s impossible not to grow attached to her. If Scott and the others make it back, he tells himself, Melissa will be fine. They’ll find her and it’ll be fine, he won’t lose her too. 

“What if Allison doesn’t come back because it was me instead of you?” Isaac says. 

“I told you, she’ll be back.”

“She would be in better hands with you.”

“Isaac, relax.”

He wants to growl at her and tell her neither of them should be relaxed. How can they be relaxed when their friends are drowned right behind them? They were the ones who pushed them under the water, held them down as their breath ran out and the survival instinct kicked in. Isaac had drowned Allison. He would have had to drown Scott, if Deaton hadn’t suggested Lydia go with Stiles. Isaac doesn’t like to think of this as him hurting the people he cares the most about, but that’s what it feels like. 

Allison had thought Isaac would pair up with Scott, he remembers. She had moved to be with Lydia before Deaton made his suggestions and her response made it sound like she just knew how much Isaac and Scott meant to each other. It’s odd to think about, when he knows their history. There should be more jealousy and awkwardness there, not such total understanding. It’s relieving to know that Allison might not become a source of animosity between him and Scott. He knows none of them would want that but he hadn’t expected it to be easy, either. Tension was to be expected but the way Allison reacted to Deaton gives Isaac hope that it might be easy after all. 

Guilt starts to build up inside of Isaac and he looks across the small room, looks past Lydia until his eyes land on the tub where Scott is laying. He gets up, joints cracking with the movement, and reseats himself in front of Scott instead. “Sorry,” he mumbles, as though Scott will hear him. 

Lydia is watching him curiously. He glances up at her and their gazes meet. “They both mean so much to me,” he admits into the quiet. 

“I know,” Lydia says. She shifts over a little until she’s in between Stiles and Allison. “I’ll cover you for a bit. How about that?”

Isaac nearly laughs at the silliness of it. The three of them are dead and nothing they do will help at this point, it’s just a waiting game and being prepared to take care of them when they wake up, but somehow the closeness seems important anyway. Isaac nods, thankful for Lydia’s help and support, for how she’s joined his symbolic gestures instead of taken to calm and nonchalance like Deaton. He’d rather have someone close by than to be sitting here alone. 

Deaton chooses this moment to return to the room. He carries two mugs in his hands and brings them over, offering them to Isaac and Lydia. “Caffeine,” he explains lightly. The two of them accept the warm drinks. 

“Thanks,” Isaac says. “Are you still not worried?”

“Like I said, there is more to this particular sacrifice than there might otherwise be. They will come back when it’s time.”

Isaac takes a gulp of his drink, barely flinching when the liquid scalds the roof of his mouth. The burn is welcome and it doesn’t last long in any case. Lydia drinks hers at a more cautious pace, letting it cool before bringing it carefully to her lips. She looks tired, even more tired than Isaac feels. There’s still a bruise around her neck. 

The three of them sit in silence and drink their coffee for a while until Deaton has to leave for his next appointment. Isaac hears a cat hissing a couple rooms over at some point but mostly he lets himself zone out and tries to rest without actually sleeping. 

Sometime later, Deaton brings them food too and tells him the appointments are over for the day. It must be noon. 

In between slow bites, Isaac asks, “Why did you put me with Allison?”

Deaton’s answer isn’t anything Isaac expected. “You didn’t need to be paired with Scott in order to act as his tether. Your relationship with Allison is of a newer nature, however.”

Isaac blinks at Deaton and then looks over at Lydia. She looks curious, but not as surprised as Isaac. “What do you mean by that?” Isaac asks Deaton as he turns back towards him. 

“Exactly what I said. You’re important to both of them and they’re both important to you. But your bond with Scott has already been strengthened through shared experiences. You tether them both, my involvement is more of a technicality.”

“I don’t…”

“Yes, you do,” Lydia cuts in. “You’ve said it yourself.”

Swallowing hard, Isaac turns his gaze to the floor again. “Can it work that way?”

Lydia surprises Isaac by replying, “Why shouldn’t it?”

When Isaac looks up again, Deaton has a knowing smile on his face and Lydia looks determined. Her hand is resting on the middle tub, Stiles’, and Isaac listens to her heart beat quick and strong. “Okay,” he says. “What do you think the alpha pack is doing right now? It feels weird to just be waiting here after how things have been escalating lately.”

“I suspect they are searching for the darach as well, in their own methods,” Deaton answers. “I doubt there will be conflict, we aren’t actively working against them right now. Scott, Allison, and Stiles’ sacrifice could prove to be just as informative for them as us and Deucalion isn’t likely to get in the way. If they do make an appearance, you already know what I’ve done to fortify this building.”

Isaac nods. “Yeah, I know. I guess I just feel like I should be doing more right now.”

“There will be plenty to do once your friends return.”

As far as Isaac knows, Deaton isn’t the type to feign certainty. If there were a problem, he would tell them both, and then they would do whatever needed doing in order to fix it. The resolute demeanor to his words, the confidence in his voice, makes Isaac believe that everything really is fine. He needs to stay strong for both Scott and Allison.

Still, the inactivity and the waiting itch ruthlessly as his skin. Lydia has already returned to her chair when Isaac finally stands up and starts walking around again. He leaves Cora some text messages to read when she’s finally feeling better and he starts looking through some of the books Deaton has on display around the room with legitimate interest. Living with Scott, being with Scott so often, has meant being around the veterinarian office more often. 

Scott once told him about a time when he and Allison had just met, and she’d accidentally hit a dog with her car and had been so upset when she brought him in. At the time, the story had been told as proof that Allison was a good person, that things had just gotten messed up and manipulated. Scott had wanted Isaac to forgive her and get past the things that happened at the beginning of summer. It’s obvious that Scott still cares about her very much. 

Isaac wants it to stay that way. It feels right. 

“How long has it been?” he asks.

“Fourteen and a half,” Lydia answers.

Isaac stops pacing and looks over at her. “Isn’t the eclipse…?”

“Five hours,” she says, nodding. “They had better hurry up.”

Laughing weakly, Isaac leans back against the wall. He regards Allison’s motionless face, willing her eyes to open, but they don’t. As he watches her, he listens, waiting for the familiar sound of Scott’s heartbeat to pick up suddenly, signalling that he’s waking up. That doesn’t come either. 

Exhaustion nags at Isaac as he walks around the edges of the room, past where Deaton calmly waits and where Lydia sits with her arms crossed and foot tapping. The tension in her body is almost tangible in the air. 

After Isaac makes a few more circuits of the room, Lydia says, “You don’t think they’ll miss the eclipse completely, do you?”

“They shouldn’t,” is all Deaton says. It isn’t the most reassuring answer.

Isaac can’t keep himself from watching the clock and Lydia doesn’t hide the fact that she’s watching it too. The minute hand moves too quickly, gaining on the next hour and yet Scott, Allison, and Stiles don’t wake up. 

The room is small and cluttered but not so small and cluttered that Isaac has ever felt claustrophobic within its walls. It isn’t dark, it isn’t enclosed, and Isaac isn’t trapped, but it begins to feel stifling anyway. He’s been cooped up too long and he’s tired of his friends being dead and dying. 

“Isaac,” Lydia says in a low voice. 

“I need some air.”

He steps out of the room and makes his way down the hall, walking all the way up to the waiting room and then walks back again, taking deep breaths as he goes. After walking up to the waiting room a second time he stops, feeling the openness of the room, and looks through the glass doors to where the sky has darkened outside.

For a while he stands there alone, clearing his mind. When he feels ready for it, he thinks of Scott, Allison, and Stiles, and how they always make it through whatever life throws at them. He thinks about Scott’s loyalty and determination and Allison’s strength and cunning. He knows they’ll make it. 

The sound of Allison’s heartbeat is like a pounding drum. Scott gasps for air and it feels like he takes it right out of Isaac’s lungs. 

Isaac reaches the doorway a second later and there they are, clambering out of the water, speaking urgently, returning to him.


End file.
